Jeremy Thomas, Oscar-Winning British Film Producer, Dies at 77

Oscar-winning British film producer Jeremy Thomas, celebrated for championing international auteurs and independent cinema on classics including The Last Emperor and Sexy Beast, has died at his Oxfordshire country home aged 77. His family confirmed he passed away peacefully on Friday, September 11, 2026.

Jeremy Thomas, born in July 1949, built a reputation for backing bold, uncompromising projects that major Hollywood studios routinely avoided. Operating primarily out of London through his Recorded Picture Company—which he founded in the 1970s—he forged enduring creative alliances with legendary directors such as Bernardo Bertolucci, David Cronenberg, Nicolas Roeg, and Nagisa Oshima.

Independent Triumph With The Last Emperor and Auteurs

Thomas’s defining triumph arrived when he independently financed The Last Emperor, Bertolucci’s 1987 epic biographical drama chronicling the life of Puyi, the final Qing dynasty monarch of China.

That milestone cemented a collaborative partnership with Bertolucci that yielded subsequent international features like The Sheltering Sky, Little Buddha, Stealing Beauty, and The Dreamers. Beyond Bertolucci, Thomas cultivated a daring slate of films that pushed narrative boundaries. He produced Roeg’s psychological dramas Bad Timing, Eureka, and Insignificance, alongside Oshima’s wartime drama Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, which famously starred David Bowie as a defiant British prisoner of war.

Decades pass and we still remember those films that challenge the norms, stir the pulse, excite the mind and soul. Jeremy Thomas made more films like that than perhaps any producer of my time. Wizard. RIP.

Heartbroken fan

Tributes From Across the Global Film Industry

As news of his passing reached the final day of the 83rd Venice Film Festival, filmmakers and producers flooded public channels with tributes. Fellow producer Stephen Woolley remembered him as a huge inspiration and a massively undervalued genius and rebel in our industry.

attend the The Storms of Jeremy Thomas Photo Call during the 74th Cannes Film Festival on July 9, 2021 in Cannes, France — Photo: IndieWire

Director Luca Guadagnino emphasized that the producer’s catalog remains unmatched across the last half-century. Colleagues also highlighted his unconventional generosity; Jon Thompson recalled how Thomas once sold Natural Nylon’s entire script back catalog for the symbolic sum of one pound. Recognized widely for his cultural footprint, Thomas was appointed a CBE in the 2009 New Year Honours and received the European Film Academy’s Outstanding European Achievement in World Cinema honor in 2006.

Navigating Censorship and Dangerous Material

Never one to shy away from provocation, Thomas steered projects that courted fierce controversy and regulatory battles. Ballard’s transgressive novel Crash, the resulting film sparked immediate outrage from jury president Francis Ford Coppola at Cannes and triggered local authority distribution bans across parts of the UK. Similarly, his work with Terry Gilliam on the dark children’s fable Tideland and Jonathan Glazer’s sharp crime thriller Sexy Beast demonstrated an appetite for untamed cinematic visions.

Jeremy Thomas smiling in orange tinted sunglasses and a shirt at the Cannes Film Festival in 2021 — Photo: BBC

His career bridged generations of distinct cinematic voices, extending from early editorial work on Ken Loach’s Family Life and his debut producing credit on the 1976 Australian outlaw biopic Mad Dog Morgan through to dystopian science fiction like Ben Wheatley’s High-Rise and Matteo Garrone’s Pinocchio.

Final Projects and Unresolved Legacies

Thomas passed away mere days before the scheduled festival debut of his latest collaboration with Japanese filmmaker Takashi Miike. Their reimagining of the Abel Ferrara and Werner Herzog universe, titled Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo, is due to premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.